There is no more pathetic
spectacle than that of an age which is bored with life. Materially our modern world is richer than perhaps any
preceding age; spiritually we are paupers. Not all our truly wonderful physical accomplishments, not all
our abundance of amusements and sensations can hide the fact that we are poor within. In fact, the task of the
latter is but to hide the poverty within; when our inner life is arid we must needs create artificial stimuli from
without to provide a substitute, or at least cause such an unbroken succession of ever varying sensations that
we have no time to notice the absence of life from within.
There are but few
who can hear either solitude or silence, and find a wealth of life arising in themselves even when there is naught
from without to stimulate. Yet such alone are happy, such alone truly live; where we find the craving for amusement
and sensation from without we see an abject confession of inner lifelessness. There lies the difference between
the quick and the dead, some are dead even in life, others can never die since they are life. We all seek life,
since life is happiness and life is reality. But it is only when we have the courage to cease from sensationalism
and outer stimulants that we may be successful in our quest.
Philosophy is the
quest of life. It is more than a love of wisdom, unless we understand wisdom as being different from knowledge,
as different as life is from death. Wisdom is knowledge which is experience and therefore life; the quest of wisdom
is in reality the quest of life. It is true that the name of philosophy has often been used to corer a game of
intellectual question and answer which leaves men no richer than before. Thus the average man distrust philosophy
and accuses it of giving stones for bread. But real philosophy is not the intellectual solving of problems; in
the words of Plato, philosophy is the birth of wonder, and he is the true philosopher who begins to wonder about
life, not he who is certain of having solved that which is beyond solution. It is profoundly true that, until we
can see the wonder of life all around us, unless we see ourselves surrounded by a mystery that challenges our daring
exploration, we have not entered on the path of philosophy.
Unawakened man knows
only facts, no mysteries, to him things are their own explanation; the world is there and what else is there to
know? Such is the animal outlook; to the bovine mind pastures may be good or bad, but they need no explanation.
Thus unawakened man is content with the facts of existence--his environment, his food, his work, his family and
friends are so many facts surrounding him, pleasant or unpleasant, but never in need of explanation. To speak to
him of mystery hidden in his life and his world would not convey any meaning; he exists and the fact of his existence
is sufficient unto him. Death and life themselves may for a while cause him anxiety or joy, but even then they
do not arouse any questions; they are familiar and customary. It is the very familiarity of life which hides its
mystery to the animal mind. That which seen once would be a marvel becomes familiar when seen a hundred times and
ceases to suggest the possibility of further explanation; have we not switched on the electric light so many times
that the unexplained wonder of electricity is lost in the familiarity of the action and the fact has become its
own explanation?
There was a time,
in the childhood of humanity, when primitive man lived in a world of mystery moving among dark fears and unknown
terrors. But even them, though the mystery was felt and the world was seen as in a dream, the possibility of questioning
the mystery did not suggest itself--primitive man was too much part of nature to question and investigate. With
the dawn of intellect the mystery of primitive man is lost and naught but facts in their vulgarity remain; in the
sublime ignorance of a self-satisfaction, which doubts neither itself nor the world, man moves among mysteries
which, could he but realize them, would strike terror into his heart. And should he occasionally catch a glimpse
of the mystery of life he but hastens to cover it up and even deny it, lest the comfort of his intellectual slumber
should be disturbed. Rather than risk the chance of an upheaval of the familiar and comfortable facts of his existence
he will shut his eyes to the unexplained and burn at the stake those who persist in seeing and questioning.
The time, however, comes for most of us,
when catastrophe and suffering shock us out of the ruts of familiarity, when our old world is destroyed beyond
hope of recovery. It is as if the universe, in which, but a few days before, we moved about with the easy certainty
of unawakened man, had disappeared overnight and each familiar object and event had become a dark and terrible
mystery. Thus would the traveler feel who, waking from a dreamless slumber, finds that he has slept by the side
of deadly reptile, unaware of its proximity and happy in his ignorance.
The awakening to the mystery of life is
a revolutionary event; in it an old world is destroyed so that a new and better one may take its place, and all
things are affected by the change. We ourselves have become mysterious strangers in our own eyes and tremblingly
we ask ourselves who we are, whence we came, whither we are bound. Are we the being who is called by our name,
whom we thought we knew so well in the past? Are we the form we see in the mirror, our body, offspring of our parents?
Who, then, is it that feels and thinks within us, that wills and struggles, plans and dreams, that can oppose and
control this physical body which we thought to be ourselves? We wake up to realize that we have never known ourselves,
that we have lived as in a blind dream of ceaseless activity in which there was never a moment of self recollection.
Our very consciousness is terra incognita; we know not the working of our own mind. What is it that happens when we think or feel, when a moral
struggle takes place in us, when we are inspired, respond to beauty or sacrifice ourselves for others? It is as
if we were prisoners in the vast palace of our consciousness, living confined to a small and bare room beyond which
stretch the many apartment of our inner world, into which we never penetrate, but one of which mysterious visitors
–feelings, thoughts, ideas and suggestions, desires and passions—come and pass through our prison, without our
knowing hence they come or whiter they go. In our consciousness we knew but results, we saw but that which rose
to the surface and became visible; now we begin to realize a vast and unexplored world of mystery which, mirabile dictu, is the world of our own inner life. We are discovering the wonder of life.
It is everywhere around us, this wonder
of life, nothing now is common or familiar, everything throbs with a mysterious life which is there for us to explore.
The sacred enthusiasm of the investigator claims us, we desire to know as a starving man desires food, we cannot
live unless we know; we will know if it must cost our lives. Thus are we born as philosophers.
THE MYSTERY OF LIFE
The mystery of
life is not a problem to be solved; it is reality to be experienced. Beware of the man who claims to have solved
the problem of life, who would explain its complexities and, with deadly logic, build a system in which all the
facts of our existence may be pigeon-holed and neatly stored away. He stands condemned by his own claim. The child
which sees wonder in all the world around it, to whom the shells with which it plays on the beach are objects breathless
excitement and thrilled amazement, is nearer to divine truth than the intellectualist who would strip a world of
its mystery and takes pride in showing us its anatomy in ruthless dissection. For a while it may satisfy evolving
man to know that the splendors of a sunset are but the breaking of light-rays in a moist atmosphere; he will come
to realize that he may have explained the method, but has not touched the mystery at all. Recovering from the sureness
of youth, never doubting itself, awakened man returns to the wonder of childhood and once again sees a world, which,
as the years pass by, deepens in mystery and beauty, but is never exhausted or explained.
Many are the systems claiming to explain
life, contradictory in their premises and consequently in their conclusions. They may be clever, they may fit perfectly
in all their details, but life itself never evades them; were it possible to contain life in a system it would
no longer be life, but death. Life is ever changing, ever becoming, yet eternal in its abiding reality and the
desire to grasp and hold it, to see it stretched out before us, as a butterfly in its glass case is destined ever
to be disappointed. Our systems of theology and philosophy, yes, even science, are but as momentary glimpses of
a rapid movement; they may show us an instant of that movement in frozen immobility, the movement itself can never
be contained in them. And yet, even though the attempt to solve the problem of life and explain it logically is
doomed to failure still the yearning to understand more, to know our own meaning and purpose is so irresistible
that even the thought of failure cannot hold it back.
The thirst for truth is a sacred aspiration;
like water seeking to gain its true level its onward pressure is unending until its purpose is fulfilled, its object
achieved. Such a fundamental desire cannot exist only to be frustrated; the very existence of the desire for truth
is the promise of its fulfillment and prophesies achievement. Fundamental instincts are never wholly mistaken;
if truth were not for man the desire for truth would not be as a burning unrest in his heart, the eagle ever eating
out Prometheus’ liver which ever grows again. That man should desire truth above all things is right, that he should
be willing to sacrifice himself, his years, yes, his very life, to achieve does but show the nobility of the desire.
But when, in blindness of materialism, he wants to have
truth, to grasp and hold her, to lock her between
the pages of a book, to make an object, a thing of that which is the heart of things, then the nobility of his
aspiration is lost and the hero of yesterday becomes an object of pity, at whom the great gods smile in compassion.
Though ever again men may claim to have
found truth and to possess her, truth herself remains untouched; truth is the mystery of life, which the hand of
man can never reach. Truth never descends to our world of error, he who would know must ascend towards that world
of Reality where he can see face to face and, for a while, becomes living truth. But it is ever man who must climb
the mountain of reality; the Vision on the Mount does not descend into the valley. Thus it is possible for man
to know the mystery of life; solve it he never can, still less contain it in an intellectual system, however logical.
Life is not logical; thought logic is the alphabet, which we must learn if we would speak the language of life,
which is truth. And yet no intelligible language can tell of the vision to him who has not seen it; each must tread
the weary path up the mountainside by himself and reach the bare and lonely top where alone the vision can be seen.
We may point out the path, tell of the hardships on the way, the dangers to be avoided and the obstacles to overcome,
but none may tell the final mystery—its name is experience.
The mystery of life in not a problem to
be solved, it is a reality to be experienced.
THE VISION ON THE MOUNT
Once we begin to
question the world, to demand an answer from our daily existence, we embark on a long and perilous voyage of exploration.
Not too lightly should we leave these familiar shores; unless we are willing to suffer hardship, to toil and persevere
when all seems lost, to sail on towards the unknown even though death may be our share, we had better stay at home
and hug the shores we know. Yet, if we dare and persevere what glories open up before us, what undreamed joys become
ours! All achievement is to be paid in toil and hardship; that which comes easily and is given to us, is never
the treasure that is lasting.
He who would leave the valley of familiar
life in order to climb the far off mountain has to buy his achievement with unknown dangers and continual hardship.
His friends will mock at him when he leaves the village of his youth, the place of sunshine and familiar sights,
the home and fireside where he is safe from the dangers of the world. Why should he leave all that makes life dear
and risk it in futile endeavors after the impossible? But he in whom the yearning has been born does not heed the
mockery; there is that within him which will not let him rest until he has achieved. And yet, when once he has
left the haunts of man and has entered the dense and tangled woods that cover the foothills, he may well doubt
whether he has done right. Here is no path to guide him, no sunshine to give him his bearings; the dense vegetation
around seems to shut out the very world and for weary days he hews his way through the tangled growth.
Gradually he ascends and reaches the higher
slopes where new and more terrible dangers await him—barren rocks and deadly precipices, cold and piercing winds,
treacherous snowfields to be traversed with chasms hidden beneath their smooth surface. His very footsteps dislodge
the snow and avalanches threaten with sudden death, yet he climbs on, frost and starvation have no terrors for
him, for far ahead shows the mountain top which he must reach. Many a time would he give up his struggle and succumb
to the weariness that envelops him, but ever again the voice from within urges him on, the voice that promises
achievement.
Then come the last and fearful hours when
his lungs can hardly breathe the rarefied air and progress becomes ever slower and more painful. His hands bleed
where the sharp rock has torn his flesh, his every step is a burden, in agony he climbs the final slope and reaches
the top, where he sinks down, panting and exhausted.
But when he lifts his head and looks around,
a new world meets his eye. Far below he sees the woods where he struggled in darkness, lost and erring, beyond
again he sees the village of his youth, further yet other villages and cities. But he himself is now lord of all,
he has forsaken his world to find a greater World, renounced the familiar sights of life to find the Vision of
the mountaintop. Forgotten now his hardships, forgotten the long and painful struggle; in the light of this new
world he knows but the bliss which the Vision brings to those who gain it. Henceforth this is his world, the world
of the mountaintop; henceforth this is his inspiration, the Vision on the Mount. He who has seen it can never again
be the same man, he has the world stretched out at his feet, has know himself the conqueror of life and death and,
wherever he goes, his eyes behold that Vision.
When he descends
again and returns from the heights to the valleys in which men live he comes with a new joy singing in his heart
and with a solitude, which henceforth will make him lonely even in the crowded city. For he moves amongst men who
know not the Vision of the mountain top, men whose sight does not reach further than their neighbour’s street,
and how can he speak to them of the unutterable things which be beheld in the solitude and splendor of the mountain
top? Those who knew him see that he has come back a changed man, that, like the Ancient mariner, he has a look
in his eyes which makes men feel less certain of themselves and causes them to pause for a while in their hurried
stride. And he, in whatsoever place he finds himself, ever sees the Vision before him, he sees it even in the ugliness
and misery of the lives of men, he hears the Song of Joy singing even through their cries of pain, whatever he
beholds is illumined by the glory he has seen.
The familiar sights
of his youth have now gained a new and sometimes terrible meaning. Nothing can be commonplace or meaningless to
him who has seen the Vision on the Mount. The mystery of life is as a secret Voice within, telling of new and wonderful
meanings in all that surrounds him. To some he speaks of the Vision he has seen, of the terrible path he has trodden,
and possibly they too feel the yearning for the mountaintop and leave life in order to find it again in fuller
measure. But thought he may tell of his experience, tell of the vision he has seen, each man to whom he speaks
must in solitude make the ‘flight of the alone to Alone’ and gain the Vision of which no words can ever tell.
Truly, not lightly should we question and
explore the world with which we are familiar, which we seem to know so well, for once we have begun this voyage
of exploration there is no turning back to the state of content which knew not doubt or question. It is a great
but terrible thing when doubt is born, terrible in that it destroys the old world, great in that it opens the way
to a new and nobler one.
CHAPTER TWO
FROM THE UNREAL TO THE REAL
Woe! Woe!
Thou hast destroyed it!
The beautiful world!
Woe! Woe!
Thou hast destroyed!
Destroyed!
Create! Create!
Build it again
In shy heart,
The beautiful world!
Create! Create!
Create! --- Goethe, Faust I.
OUR DUAL UNIVERSE
It is in the most familiar things of life
that the deepest mystery lies hidden. If there is anything about which we feel sure, with which we think ourselves
fully and entirely familiar, it is this world surrounding us, the world of our daily life. Around us we are aware
of this world, solid and visible, a world so real to us that it would seem madness to doubt its reality. We can
see and feel that world, lift the heavy and solid objects in it, hurt ourselves against their unyielding immobility
and are impressed all the time by this fundamental fact of our existence—that there, opposite us, independent and
apart from us, stands a physical world, utterly and entirely real, solid and tangible.
Within ourselves we are aware of another
world, equally real to us, equally accepted as a basic fact of our existence. But it is a world of consciousness,
of life, of awareness, a world which we associate with the feeling that we are ‘we’. As a rule, however, our attention
is not directed towards that world within, and for most of us it remains a vague and mysterious realm, out of which
thoughts and feelings, desires and impulses, flashes of inspiration and sudden ideas seem to emerge, entering into
our daily existence with a compelling power that will not be denied. These strange inner happenings also we accept
as facts, knowing even less about them than about the solid world of ‘material realities’, in which we are so immersed
and engrossed. We are thus faced by this strange fact—that the world of our own consciousness is unfamiliar to
us, even through it is our very self, and that the world outside, which we assume to be not self, seems quite familiar
and well known.
Such then is the fundamental structure of our daily life—a solid, tangible, material world without
and a mysterious realm of consciousness within, forming a duality which most of us never come to doubt. In this
primitive dualism we live our lives an we look upon our perceptions and our actions as an interplay between those
worlds--sensations coming to us from the world outside and forming perceptions in our consciousness, from which
again volition and action go forth to change and influence that outer world.
This sense of duality, of an outer and an
inner world, is so familiar to us, enters so much into every moments of our lives, that, whenever questions arise
with regard to the problems of life, we always, in those questions, assume and presuppose of this primitive duality
as a fact which needs no proving, without even
being aware that we introduce it. We unconsciously
base our reasoning, yes, the very methods of our analysis and logic, on this fundamental duality which we accept
because we have never thought about it. In the quest of truth, however, we must be utterly free from prejudice
and ruthlessly sincere, never accepting a fact, cherished though it may be and hallowed by universal recognition,
without first challenging its reality, even though such a challenge might appear superfluous. Only thus can we
prevent error from entering into our very questions.
Let us then consider
the two elements of our universe, the world of consciousness within and the world of appearances without, and see
how we come to know of them. With regard to the consciousness or life side of our twofold universe there can be
no doubt; the fact that we are something and somehow, is the basis of all our knowledge, of all our awareness.
’Cogito, ergo sum’ is still the starting point of all investigations, the very words ‘I think’ already imply the
basic fact, ‘I am’.
In ordinary consciousness
all I know is an unceasing, everflowing modification of my inner life, of my very being; my awareness, or state
of consciousness, is different at every moment. I know nothing but these states of consciousness or awareness;
nothing, idea or object, exists for me unless I am aware of it, that is to say, unless it is awareness in my consciousness.
It is difficult
to realize this simple fact that, when we say we know a thing, whether as a sense of perception or as an idea,
all we do really know is a state of consciousness corresponding in some way to the object or to the idea. We live
and move and have our being in the world of our consciousness and it is the only world we know directly, all else
we know through it. This means that all knowledge; we experience an awareness in our consciousness and thence derive
the existence of something that has produced the awareness.
Hence our relation
to the appearance side of our universe, the outer world, is very different from our relation to the consciousness
side of it; the last we know directly, it is our very being, the other we know only indirectly, in so far as our
being is modified by it in what we call ‘awareness’. Therefore, while we cannot doubt the fact that we are aware
of things and that we are experiencing modifications of consciousness, we must carefully scrutinize our conclusions
about an objective universe around us which produces the perceptions in our consciousness. The latter are indubitable,
the former but a conclusion which we rightly or wrongly derive from them. Yet, curiously enough, we feel perfectly
confident about the objective universe around us, even though it is a derived knowledge, and feel somewhat uncertain
as to the world of consciousness within; the stone at our feet is ever more real to us than our consciousness within.
Yet we only know that stone in and through our consciousness.
THE WAY OF SENSE-PERCEPTION
Yet we feel convinced of the objective reality
of the world surrounding us, ‘just as we see it,’ in fact, we forget all about our consciousness as intermediary
between ourselves and the object and look upon the awareness in our consciousness as identical with the object
itself. Thus, when we see a green tree, we do not doubt for a moment that the tree stands there, a hundred yards
away from us, exactly as we see it, and we have gone a long way in philosophical realization when we can realize and
not merely believe that the tree which we see is but the image produced in our consciousness by the tree which
is and that the two are by no means identical.
The primitive and unthinking way of explaining
sense-perception implies that, through the senses, a faithful image of the world around us is reproduced in our
consciousness in such a way that image and reality are exactly alike see Plate I). In order to explain this process
still further we compare it to the action of a photographic camera, where through the lens an entirely accurate
and faithful picture is reproduced on the sensitive plate. Satisfied with the explanation we sink back into our
unquestioning acceptance of the world around us, glad that everything is so simple and never suspecting that we
have not explained anything at all. How the image reaches our consciousness through the darkness of the sensory
nerves and the brain matter is a question which does not even occur in the primitive explanation. And yet, even
if the senses produced a faithful image of the world surrounding us, that image again would have to be perceived
by the consciousness and with regard to the perception of that image we should find ourselves faced by exactly
the same difficulty as with regard to the perception of the outer world itself. We have merely shifted the problem
one step, and, to the unthinking mind, such a shifting or re-statement of a problem is generally quite acceptable
by way of explanation.
However, the image which the senses give
us of the world around can never be a faithful one; our senses are selective and can only interpret those elements
of the world around us to which they are able to respond. Thus, in the case of sound and light, we need only look
at a table of vibrations in air and ether to realize how extremely small the groups of vibrations are to which
eye and ear react. With regard to all the other vibrations we are practically insensitive, we only know them by
inference.
It is a very useful exercise to think ourselves into a state of consciousness, where those elements of the world
around us, to which our senses respond now, would be non-existent and the contents of our world-image would be
furnished by elements to which our present senses do not respond. Imagine two beings meeting and comparing their
knowledge of the world, a human being with our five senses and an imaginary being with the senses we lack. Each
of them would be aware of a world around him, each of them, unless they were philosophers, would be quite certain
that he perceived the world exactly as it was there, outside, and that he perceived all there was to be perceived
of it. Yet their two worlds would be utterly unlike; could we for a moment perceive the other being’s world there
would be nothing in it familiar to us or resembling any feature of our world. And yes, the other being would have
as much right to call his world the real world, as we should have to call ours the world as it really is. But from
the standpoint of reality no one has a right to call his world the world; it is his world
and nothing more, his selective interpretation of reality.
With the understanding of this truth our
primitive explanation of sense-perception as a faithful reproduction of the world around us collapses, and our
world-image, far from being identical with the real world, becomes but our specific interpretation of that world;
our world is but our version of the
world.
It is well to ponder deeply over this very simple fact of the selectivity of our senses and thoroughly familiarize
ourselves with the idea that what we see around us is not the world at all, but rather the peculiar interpretation
of that world which we as human beings, because of the nature of our five senses, make. It is not sufficient to
agree intellectually with this and say that the argument is clear and that we acknowledge it to be true; philosophy
must be realization if it is to be worth anything, and the truth we realize must become part of our very consciousness.
Our innate superstition that the world we see is the
world indeed is so deeply ingrained in our
nature that it will rise again and again and make us believe that our world-image is the world in reality. Our
primitive illusions need to be rudely shaken before a wider knowledge can be born.
Even if our senses
are selective and do but interpret certain features of the world around us we might yet be tempted to say that,
in so far as they do interpret that world, they interpret it faithfully and that the colours we see or the sounds
we hear are there, around us, exactly as we are aware of them. Even a superficial study of the physiology of sense-perception,
however, is sufficient to break down this last stronghold of sense-realism. Since the problem is the same for all
our senses we may take the eye, and the sense of vision connected with it, as representative of the principles
of sense-perception in general.
The light-vibrations which reach the eye
are focused through the lens and act on the retina behind the eyeball, causing structural and chemical changes
in it. If, at this stage of the process of seeing, we, as it were, tapped the wire, we should as yet find no trace
of that which later on will become our awareness of the green tree; all we find are structural and chemical changes
in the rods and cones which form the upper layer of the retina. It is of the utmost importance to realize that
the knowledge, so far conveyed to the body from the outer world, is contained in these chemical and structural
changes, which in turn affect the optic nerve along which a message is conveyed to that area in the brain which
corresponds to the sense of vision. Still there is no question of a blue sky or a green tree; all we can hope to
find in the brain, if we tap the wire at this stage of the process, is the change in the particles of the brain
matter which are affected by the message conveyed along the optic nerve.
Then suddenly we, the living individual, in our consciousness, are aware of the green tree or, as we express it,
we ‘see’ the green tree. (Plate II.) This last stage is the great mystery of sense-perception, and neither physiology
nor psychology has yet bridged for us that gap between the last perceptible change in the brain and our awareness
of the object with its colours and shapes
Even in the final stage of the physiological process, which is the change in the brain matter, there is no question
whatsoever of colour, shape or form, there are only structural and chemical changes in the optical apparatus. It
is only when we, the living creature, interpret in our own consciousness that final stage that there is the green
tree, the whole world of light and colour around us. But
there is no green tree until we reach that consciousness stage; there is, no doubt, some unknown reality which reacts on our senses and somehow produces in our consciousness
the awareness of the green tree and will produce that awareness each time it reacts on our consciousness, but there
is nothing to show that this unknown reality in any way looks like a green tree. For all we know it may be a mathematical
point, having within itself certain properties which, react on a human consciousness, produce there the different
qualities which make up the image of the green tree as we see it. We, however, substitute the image produced in
our consciousness for the unknown reality without an make believe that we are perceiving that selfsame green tree
which is the image produced in our consciousness, that is to say, we think we are perceiving as an objective reality
that which we are projecting as an image in the world of our consciousness. We, as it were, clothe
the nakedness of the unknown reality with the image produced in our consciousness.
The same facts, which are true for the sense of vision, hold good for our perception through any of the senses;
thus there is no question of should but in our consciousness, no question of taste or smell but in our consciousness,
no question of hardness or softness, of heaviness or lightness but in our consciousness; our entire world-image
is an image arising on our consciousness because of the action on that consciousness by some unknown reality.
OUR BODY TOO PART OF OUR WORLD-IMAGE
It is clear from a study of the physiology
of sense-perception that all we know of the realities without, or of things in themselves, are the images produced
by them in the world of our consciousness. But, curiously enough, even where we find this recognized and understood,
we often find the physical body itself and the vibrations reaching it from the unknown objects outside, treated
as if they were not images in our consciousness, but as if concerning them we knew everything.
But how do we know of the existence of any vibration? By sense-perception, aided by scientific instruments which
help us to see either the vibration itself or the effect produced by that vibration, showing us its nature. But
surely this again is sense-perception and our perception of the vibration which reaches the eye, of the eye itself,
the retina and the changes produced in it, of the optic nerve, and of the brain itself, takes place in exactly
the same way as our perception of any object belonging to this mysterious outer world. They two: vibration, eye,
retina, nerve and brain belong to that world of unknown quantities which in us produces images. Whether the image
is that of a green tree, an optic nerve, or the grey matter in the brain does not matter, the relation of image
to unknown reality is the same for all. The eye, the optic nerve, the brain and our physical body in general should
not be singled out from this world surrounding us; they one and all belong to the world of unknown reality without,
which produces in our consciousness that image which we call the world, but which is only our world-image.
It is the peculiar
relation in which we stand to our own body, the intimate link we have with it and which we do not have with regard
to any other object in the outer world, which makes us feel that we know all about its reality, even though other
things may be full of mystery. We have an inside feeling of our body which we do not have with regard to a stone
or a tree, our body appears to us as part of ourselves and we forget that is as much part of that outer world as
the tree or the stone, and that our perception of it as a visible and tangible object takes place in just the same
way as our perception of the tree or of the stone. Even the inner feeling we have of our body is but a variety
of sense-perception which exists for our body alone. It too is but an awareness produced in our consciousness by
an unknown reality, and with regard to it the same mystery exists as with regard to our perception of any other
object in the outer world.
This means that we must somewhat revise
our conception of the process of sense-perception. In it the object outside was supposed to be unknown, but the
vibration which it sent out, the eye reached by that vibration and the nerve and brain affected in consequence,
were all accepted as known and familiar quantities and never doubted as objective realities existing there, exactly
as we perceive them. It was this ready assumption of the physical body as an independent reality existing without,
which caused the gap between the last change in the brain and the image arising in our consciousness. This gap
disappears when we realize that our physical body too, as we know it in its shape and colours, with all its qualities,
is also an image produced in our consciousness by an unknown reality. Thus the situation becomes that shown in
Plate III, where tree, vibration, eye, retina, optic nerve, brain and physical body in general, are one and all
shown as images arising in the world of our consciousness.
OUR WORLD AND THE WORLD
There is never a truth but carries in it
the possibility of misconception. Thus it is true that the world which we ‘see around us’ is an image arising in
our consciousness, with which image we subsequently deal as if it were an objective reality, existing apart from
our consciousness. But there have been those who, catching a glimpse of this truth, have drawn the conclusion that
therefore nothing but their own consciousness was real and that the world-image arising in their consciousness
was in some way their own creation, in fact, that they lived in a world of their own making. This misconception,
called solipsism (from solus, alone and ipse, self, meaning the outlook which recognizes only my own consciousness
as real) is manifestly absurd; were it true that this world surrounding me is my own spontaneous creation. I should
be capable of varying that creation at will, and if a tree, or a stone, or any of my fellowmen displeased me I
should be able to eliminate them by an effort of the will ceasing in fact to create them. The solipsist is right
in saying that what most people conceive to be an objective reality surrounding them is in reality their world-image,
but he omits the second and greater truth, namely—that this world image is produced in our consciousness by the
action upon that consciousness of an unknown reality, the real world or world of things in themselves. It is perfectly
true that what I take to be an objective world is only the world-image produced in my consciousness, but it is
equally true that this world-image is determined in its character by the nature of the things in themselves; it
is my interpretation of them, partial and imperfect, but not containing anything which is not determined, in principle
or in essence, by the thing in itself. Every phenomenon on my world-image is intimately and continually connected
with a very real thing or event in the world of reality, and the fact that at some moment I might cease to produce
a world-image in my consciousness does not for a moment affect conditions in the world of the Real.
The conception
of all that surrounds us as image in our consciousness was represented in Plate III; we must now go a step further
and recognize that there is a world of the Real, which, through my consciousness, produces the different images
in it. In Plate IV the world of our consciousness with its many images is shown in its relation to the world.
The smaller circles a’ the end of the rays from
the center symbolize the consciousness-worlds
of different creatures, more or less limited according to their stage of evolution. In each of these consciousness-worlds
a world-image is produced by the action of the things in themselves on that particular consciousness; each creature
only knows its own world-image.
When, therefore, an event takes place in
this world of Reality there is produced in the consciousness of each creature concerned an awareness, or image,
which is the event as we ‘see’ it.
We must not misunderstand this. When I take
up a book and drop it on the ground only one event takes place and that is the event as it is in the world of the
Real. There is nothing unreal about that event; it is entirely, wholly and thoroughly real. But my awareness of
the event, the way in which it presents itself in my world-image is my interpretation of the real event, and that
interpretation is only relatively real, real for me, not real in itself. When then, in my world-image, I am aware
of my hand grasping the book and dropping it on the ground, what really happens is that in the world of the Real
an interaction takes place between that which I am in that world, the at which my body and consequently my hand
is in that world, and that which the book and the ground are in that world, and that interaction or event is the
one and only real event which takes place. What appears in my world-image is my version of it, in which version
the unity of the event is broken up in measures of time and space and in a multitude of qualities. Then I externalize
my awareness of the event in itself and that
externalized image becomes for me the event itself. Unreality
or illusion never resides in the event, or thing in itself, nor even in my interpretation of it, which is true
enough for me, but in the fact that I take my interpretation to be the thing in itself, exalting it to the stature
of an absolute and independent reality. Referring again to Plate IV we can see how an event, affecting all the
creatures would produce a different version or image in the consciousness of each, though the event itself remains
one and the same. In fact, though the real world is necessarily the same for all beings, the interpretation of
that world must always be different for each.
The relation
of the real world to our consciousness and the image produced in it, is again shown in Plate V, but only for one
particular consciousness. In it we see how the things in themselves, as they exist in the world of the Real, act
on our center of consciousness and, through it, are projected as images in the world of consciousness, thus forming
our world-image. It is clear how, through our consciousness, all things are as it were turned inside out; instead of being aware that they act on us from within we gaze upon
the image we have produced and wonder how it influences us from without. It has become our fatal habit thus to look outwards upon the images produced in our consciousness
and to forget entirely that they are projected there by the action upon our consciousness of things in the world
of the Real. Thus, we are only aware of our own world, and, like the prisoners in Plato’s cave, we are so used
to gaze upon the back wall of our cave and see the shadows moving there, that we forget and even deny the possibility
of turning round and knowing the reality which casts the shadows.
It is in his Republic that Plato uses this
image, in which he compares men to prisoners who live in a cave and are bound in such a way that they can only
see the back of the cave, not its opening. Behind them the procession of life moves by, different creatures pass
and different events take place. The prisoners cannot see all this, but they do see the shadows cast upon the back
of the cave. These shadows are reality to the prisoners, for they are the world, and since they have never seen
anything else, it does not even occur to them that there can be another world. They may have come to know the different
shadows by name and may even have built up certain knowledge on their observation of the regularly recurring shadows.
But all the time, though their knowledge and their observation must necessarily have a certain relation to the
reality outside, they deal with shadows and not with real things.
From time to time a prisoner feels the urge
to free himself from his bonds and explore the other side of the cave. If he succeeds in doing so he discovers
the great secret; that there, outside the mouth of the cave, is a magnificent world of reality, a world of dazzling
light and beauty, and that which he used to see on the back wall of the cave were not real things at all, but only
shadows. In the beginning his eyes, unused to the light of the real world, would be as blinded; he would only be
aware of light everywhere. But gradually, as he begins to get used to this new world, he learns to distinguish
between its creatures and objects, is colours and shapes, and comes to know that world in all its rich variety.
Can we not imagine how, inspired by the wonderful discovery he has made, the erstwhile prisoner would go back to
those who are still imprisoned in the cave and tell them, full of joy, of the glorious world he has found outside?
But they would only laugh and call him mad; they know well enough that the only world is the world they see on
the back of the cave and that those who would discover other worlds, and call their world a shadow-world, are but
dreamers.
Our life is like that of the prisoners in
the cave; we too see only the back of the cave, the wall of our own consciousness on which dance the shadows, the
images cast there by the reality which we do not behold. We have come to know the play of these shadows so well
that we have been able to build up an entire science concerning them. This science is right in so far as the shadows
have a vital relation to the reality that cast them, but it is ever doomed to find itself confronted by mysteries,
which in the world of shadows can never be solved, unless some who have seen the real world introduce into these
sciences a wider knowledge. But we are impatient and incredulous when anyone would tell us that the world upon
which we gaze is not the world of her Real, but only our world-image. Yet among us too evidence is not lacking
of men, who, throughout the ages, have found freedom from their bondage, who have conquered illusion and discovered
that world of Reality of which this world of ours is but a shadow or image, cast in the cave of our consciousness.
ILLUSION AND REALITY
We must, however,
be careful about the way in which we characterize this our world as illusion, in fact, the danger of an incomplete
statement and subsequent misunderstanding is so great that it hardly seems possible to state the relation as it
truly is.
When we say, ‘this world around us is unreal,
it is illusion,’ we make a misleading statement; when we say ‘this world is real, it is not illusion,’ we are even
more misleading. Yet, if we were to think of this world as a strange mixture of real and unreal, that thought would
be the most misleading of all.
To begin with, the world itself is real; there
is nothing unreal whatsoever about a chair or a table, a tree or a stone, about all that which we call the physical
world. It is a common mistake to characterize the physical world as unreal, or less real, and some mental or spiritual
world as more real. The physical world in itself, the chair and the table in themselves, the stone or the
tree in itself, are one and all as real as I am myself. But what I usually call the table, the chair, the
stone or the tree is the image produced in my consciousness by the table, chair, stone or tree as it exists in
the world of the Real. These images are only relatively real, that is to say they are real for me, in so far as
they are my interpretation of the thing in itself, the shadow cast in my cave. It is when I begin to look upon
this image in my consciousness as an outside reality, and anidentify it with the thing in itself that illusion
enters. Then, in contemplating my image of the thing, I believe myself to be dealing with the thing in itself.
This illusion, therefore, is neither in the
thing in itself, nor in the image produced in my consciousness by that thing, but in my conception of the image
in my consciousness as the thing in itself; as an object existing independent of my consciousness.
This then is the structure and relation
of the real world and our world. There is a world of Reality, which would, for the purposes of distinction may
have to be subdivided into different ‘worlds’ later on, but it is essentially one world, the only world, and
whatever subdivisions we may find fit to make in it are not marked by labels in that real world, but are marked
by our own associations and relative standpoint. That one world is the world as it is; in it things are as they
truly are. That world is Life or Truth, or whatever else we may call ultimate Reality; that world is the Absolute,
for there is all that is or was or shall be. In that world there is interaction between the different creatures
and objects and as a result of that interaction every creature becomes aware in his consciousness of a world-image,
the shadow cast by reality. Since, however, that shadow play is all we normally know of the real world we identify
it with that real world and look upon it as a reality independent of our consciousness and standing outside us.
That is the great Illusion.
Our world-image
is thus the way in which we interpret reality. The many qualities of material objects, their distances and dimensions
in space and their change in time, all that belongs to our interpretation, to our image. The tree in the world
of the Real is not fifty feet high, its leaves are not green and smooth, its trunk is not rough to the touch and
hard and it does weigh so many hundredweights. All these qualities are my interpretation of the tree in itself
and are elements of my world-image. The tree in itself as it exists in the world of the Real may be pictured as
a mathematical point, but there is that within it which, each time it reacts upon me, produces in my world-image
a certain group of qualities of sound, touch, weight and certain measurements in space together with a certain
change or growth in time. It is my particular constitution as a human being which causes me to produce just this
type of image; the same tree in itself no doubt produces a different image in other creatures of whose existence
I may not even know.
Because of the
fundamental illusion which considers my world-image as an independent reality I come to look upon my image of the
tree as if it were the tree itself, I assume space and time and the rich variety of sense-qualities to be independent
realities existing there outside me, and I imagine events to be happening within their framework. Having thus objectivated
and separated from my consciousness that which is indissolubly part of it I find myself hedged in by problems which
no master-mind can ever solve, since they, one and all, are wrong problems, vitiated from the start by illusion.
That is why the beginning of philosophy must be a clear understanding and even experience of
the relation of our world-image to ourselves and to the world of the Real. Unless that is thoroughly clear to us
from the beginning and becomes in very truth part of our consciousness we shall find ourselves led astray at each
subsequent step. But our philosophy must be more than a mere intellectual understanding, every truth to which we
attain must become an experience in our consciousness; thus alone can philosophy be vital and of real value in
human life.
THE
EXPERIENCE OF THE WORLD OF THE REAL
If it is true that
our world-image is indeed an image produced in the cave of our consciousness by a reality beyond, it is evidently
our first task, to thread,
not merely in thought but in reality, the path leading to the world of the Real. It is here that so many philosophies fall short; they seem satisfied with having propounded their
doctrine and do not feel the necessity of the doctrine becoming reality and experience. Often such philosophical
doctrines are but an intellectual structure, strange to life and not the outcome of experience in our own consciousness.
Yet such experience should not only be the basis of any philosophical assertion, it should also be the final test
of any doctrine.
If once again we
look upon Plate V and see how our world-image is projected around us in our consciousness we can see the way we
have to go; we must withdraw ourselves from the enticing images of our own production and turn towards that center
through which the production of our world-image takes place—the depth of our consciousness. That, in the beginning,
will be the most difficult part—to abandon for a while our world-image, to relinquish this gay spectacle of time
and space and the endless variety of sense-qualities. We must renounce all that, renounce sight and hearing, touch
and taste and smell, renounce all that is phenomenon, appearance, image: this entire outer world. But even that
is not enough. Our world-image is threefold, there is what we call the physical world, there is the world of our
emotions and there is the world of thought. Most of us have not yet developed waking consciousness or self-consciousness
in the world of emotions and in the world of thought, but even so they are as much or as little an outside world
as what we turn the physical world. In the simple experiment of thought-transference we can test for ourselves
the relative objectivity of a thought-image; in the imparting of a strong emotion from one person to another, a
thing we often experience where masses of people are gathered, we can see that an emotion is not the vague inner
thing we often think it to be, but objectively real. Thus we must not only renounce the physical world with its
sense-qualities, but also the crowded worlds of our emotions and thoughts—we must cease for a while to allow any
emotion to move us or any thought to modify our consciousness. Difficult as is the renunciation of our physical
world-image, the withdrawing from the worlds of our emotions and thoughts is harder still and requires regular
and repeated attempts, stretching sometimes through many years until success is gained.
Let us then do
what so few ever do in our hurried civilization—be alone and be silent. So should relax all effort, and renounce
all sensation coming to us from without, still our emotions and our thoughts and sink back into the depth of our
own consciousness, like a diver sinking deep into the cool dark waters.
When thus we sunk
back into the depth of our own consciousness we come to a state in which nothing seems to be any more, in which
we ourselves seem to have lost name and form and all characteristics. We come to the great Void. It is the ‘grey
void abysm’ of which Shelley sings in his “Prometheus Unbound,’ in the haunting “Song of the Spirits’ which leads
Asia and Panthea down into the depths of consciousness:
To the deep, to the deep,
Down, down!
Through the shade of sleep,
Through the cloudy strife
Of Death and of Life;
Through the veil and the bar
Of thing which seem and are,
Even to the steps of the remotest throne,
Down, down!
Through the grey, void abysm,
Down, down!
Where the air is no prism,
And the moon and stars are not,
And the cavern crags wear not
The radiance of Heaven,
Nor the gloom to Earth given,
Where there is One pervading, One alone,
Down, down!
When we reach the Void within, the state
in which nothing more seems to be, it would appear as if we were surrounded on all sides by a blank wall and as
if it were impossible to proceed any further. Then comes the moment when we must break the habit of ages and, like
the prisoner in the cave, dare to turn our faces the other way and find the way out of the cave, find reality,
freedom.
We have to move in a dimension we did not
know before; the prisoner in the cave never realized that there was such a thing as a world behind him
and we can well imagine how, when first he strives towards freedom and ceases to contemplate his shadow-play on
the back wall of his cave, nothing seems to remain to him and he too finds himself in the great Void.
The first part
of our journey towards reality is the surrendering of our world-image and the turning inwards until we reach the
center of consciousness, the second is to pierce through that center and find the reality which, acting on that
center produces the world-image in the cave of our consciousness. The experience of going through the center of
consciousness and emerging, as it were, on the other side very much one of turning inside out. In our ordinary
consciousness we are turned outwards towards the world-image which we externalized around us. In going through
our consciousness the entire process is reversed, we experience an inversion, or conversion, in which that which
was without becomes within. In fact, when we succeed in going through our center of consciousness and emerge on
the other side, we do not so much realize a new world around us as a new world within us. We seem to be on the
surface of a sphere having all within ourselves and yet to be at each point of it simultaneously
It is impossible to describe the world of
Reality in the terms of our world-image, which is the only language at our command. As Kabir says: ‘That
which you see is not, and for that which is, you have no words’ (Tagore, 49). It is a world of
pure Beauty, yet, how express beauty without shape, colour or sound, the Beauty unbeheld’ of which Shelley sings?
When we experience it we feel that now we know beauty for the first time and that what we used to call beauty in
our world image was but a distorted shadow. But the outstanding reality of our experience in the world of the Real
is the amazing fact that nothing is outside us. There is distinction between different beings, the things in themselves,
there is multiplicity, there is all that which in our world-image produces the rich variety of outer forms and
yet it all is within ourselves; and when we desire to know we are that which we know.
Throughout the ages mystics have attempted
to describe their vision of reality and in Bucke’s work, Cosmic Consciousness, he gives
at length the descriptions of the mystic state by those who have experienced it. The evidence is too great to speak
of these experiences as being of a ‘merely subjective’ value; they are subjective, as all true experience, is,
but, like all great experience, they are objective in value and validity.
Plotinus, the father of intellectual mysticism,
thus describes the vision of Reality, or the ‘Intelligible “World’ as he call its, in Ennead v. 8, 4:
In this intelligible World everything
is transparent. No shadow limits vision. All the essences see each other and interpenetrate each other in the most
intimate depth of their nature. Light everywhere meets light. Every being contains within itself the entire Intelligible
World, and also beholds it everywhere, every thing there is all, and all is each thing; infinite splendour radiates
around. Everything is great, for these even the small is great. This world has its sun and its stars; each star
is a sun and all suns are stars. Each of them, while shining with its own due splendour reflects the light of the
others. There abides pure movement; for He who produces movement, not being foreign to it does not disturb it in
its production. Rest is perfect, because it is not mingled with any principle of disturbance. The Beautiful
is completely beautiful there, because it does not dwell in that which is not beautiful.
In the mystical experience of the world
of reality we use a faculty of knowledge which is only beginning to be born in humanity. It is intuition, knowing
by being, realization, the ‘Tertium Organum’ of Ouspensky. Without the use of that faculty the world of the Real
cannot be know, but we must not say that the things in themselves cannot be known at all. The ring-pass-not, which
Kant drew around the thing in itself exists only for those in whom the new faculty or organ of knowledge is not
awakened, it is by means a spell laid on all future humanity, denying to them for ever the possibility of knowing
the Real.
One truth emerges from our experience like
a mountain peak from a surrounding plain. We now realize that no philosophical problem whatsoever can ever be approached in our world-image, that there is but one way of approaching these problems which is:
to conquer the illusion of our world-image, to enter the world of the Real and, in that Reality, to experience
living Truth.
It is only in the Vision from the mountain
top that we know reality. But when we climb The Mount of Reality we must leave behind us all the load of illusion
which would weigh us down in our climb and prevent us from ascending. The burden of our cherished illusions cannot
pass through the customs of the real World, we must leave behind all that belongs to our world-image, else we shall
not reach the mountain top, we shall not see the Vision.
That Vision alone is life, the Vision is
Truth, Beauty, Peace and Joy, having seen it we have entered the world where we truly belong. When again we return
to our daily life and play the game of time and space in our world-image, as we needs must do, we shall yet, through
the world-image, ever see the Vision of Reality which we have gained; through every creature, every object, every
event of our world-image a new meaning and a new beauty will shine forth. Such is the gift of Reality even to our
world of illusion.
CHAPTER THREE
reality that exists at every moment of
time. “We always seek in the wrong direction,” says Dr. van der Leeuw, “we always want more time; we demand even endless
time in our quest of immortality. Yet the infinitely greater Reality is ever ours to enter if we but will.”